Welcome to Julsted
by Veranda
Summary: As if being ditched at Bad Wolf Bay wasn't bad enough... Rose, Jackie, and the Clone quickly discover that something is very very wrong in the idyllic seaside town of Julsted. Did I mention that it's set on Christmas Eve? Rose/TenII
1. Chapter 1

**Welcome to Julsted**

**Summary: **Multi-chap post JE story. As if being ditched at Bad Wolf Bay wasn't bad enough... Rose, Jackie, and the Clone quickly discover that something is very very wrong in the idyllic seaside town of Julsted. Adventure, angst, and adorableness ensue. (Did I mention that it's set on Christmas Eve?)  
**Author's Note: **I'm just going to go ahead and say that I'm absolutely terrified at the prospect of posting Doctor Who fanfiction. This is such a smart, thoughtful fandom, and I don't want to make an ass of myself. That being said...I can't seem to stop writing the stuff, so I might as well be posting it, right? Read if you dare, I guess. More to come. (Also, I know everyone and their mother writes post JE we're sad on the beach fics, but maybe someone's been looking for one like this?) Please tell me what you think, I can assure you I'm having a panic attack thinking about it. :)

* * *

That one awful moment, watching the old blue box fade out on the shoreline (with the familiar, yet unfamiliar hand in hers) was just one of a sequence of soul tearing moments, and Rose Tyler was older now, and she knew better, so it didn't quite hit her with the painful, gut-punching force of the last time. Not quite.

Somewhere along the way, on one unremarkable day that passed without her noticing, while losing time at her cluttered desk at Torchwood, or over a cup of tea with Jackie, she had realized what they mean when they say you can never go home. She built the dimension cannon because she had to, and she fought her way across universe after hollow universe because she needed him, and when she found him she held on with all of the strength of her singular golden being, because with a man like that what choice could you possibly have?

You just cherish the time you get, and you try not to be bitter, and you wait for the day when you're saying goodbye again_. _That's how he measures time—in goodbyes—and Rose Tyler was different, but she wasn't that different, and it didn't matter either way because hewas the same.

And now there was the problem of the new man beside her, wanting to anchor her. She realized with some discomfort that she desperately wanted to shove him, but she just looked instead, and memorized his kind, level gaze. There was nothing but love there, but it was all too much too fast, and the gentle understanding in his eyes just made it worse. He didn't seem at all surprised when she abrupty pulled her hand out of his and took an almost staggering step toward the square indentation in the sand where the TARDIS had been.

"I'll just call Pete, then," Jackie said loudly, desperate to diffuse the tension and startling them all in the process. "He'll be worried sick. Won't be long, just...checking in. And I'll get us a cab, yeah? We can be in Julsted in twenty minutes, hotel for the night, and home by...home by tomorrow evening. Doesn't that sound nice? Get out of this cold?"

Rose didn't answer, and Jackie sighed, putting the phone to her ear and cupping her hand to shield it from the wind. She carried on a muted conversation with Pete and kept one eye on Rose because they'd been here before, and Jackie had already watched her daughter pick up the pieces once, and carefully fit them back to together.

The Doctor watched Jackie remove herself to a comfortable distance and then turned back to Rose, close enough to touch, arms wrapped around herself in a familiar gesture, body slightly inclined toward the sand. Physically holding herself together.

"I feel like-" the words slipped out before he could stop himself, and when he didn't continue Rose turned, eyes bright, breathing quickly and quietly.

"What?" she said, sounding exasperated and unkind...that is to say, very much unlike herself.

"I feel like I've shown up at my own...funeral," he said, and crossed his arms across his chest defensively. He couldn't meet her eyes for long, and looked away over the ocean. She continued to stare, ignoring the feeling that something deep and essential was splintering inside her.

"You look..."

"Just like him?" he said, with a thin-lipped grimace. "Yeah."

Rose started to apologize, then didn't. Five minutes and they were already glaring at each other across the space between them. The silence stretched on long enough for her to note that the Doctor was shivering almost imperceptibly, and Rose felt herself softening towards him when Jackie bustled up, chattering good-naturedly and tucking her phone away in her back pocket.

"Strangest thing! Wonder what..." Jackie gestured vaguely with one hand and went on, "Pete's beside himself, by the way, Rose. And Tony. And he's thrilled that you've stayed, Doctor. We'll make up the guest room, of course, so-"

The Doctor shot a glance at Rose, whose expression was beyond interpretation, and quickly cut Jackie off, "What's strange?"

"Hm?" Jackie said.

"_Strangest thing_, you said," this from Rose, who was beginning to do a passable impression of normal.

"Oh, no one's answering in Julsted! And isn't that typical. Hard enough getting a cab in the middle of bloody London, so I don't know what I expected. Tried the inn as well, but no answer. Must be away from the desk. I guess we'll have to walk." Jackie pulled her coat tighter and looked up and away, toward the road. "No use staying here."

"No one's answering in town?" The Doctor said absently, sounding far away, like he was working through a dozen things in is head. Rose looked up sharply at his tone.

"Well, it's a small town, and it's not exactly tourist season, is it? They're probably just...ah..." Jackie didn't miss Rose and the Doctor's quick exchange of significant glances. "What? _What? _Oh, don't be paranoid, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation! Honestly, you two, everything is not a big, cosmic emergency. There's no need to go charging off to-"

"I'll call Torchwood. See if there's been any unusual activity."

The Doctor caught himself halfway through rolling his eyes, but Rose was to busy scrolling through her phone to notice. He brought a hand up to scratch the back of his head. "Is that really necessary? Let's just-"

"This is Rose Tyler, could you connect me to—yes, really." Rose turned, phone in hand, and headed off toward the road. "Yeah, well, I didn't expect to be back either, did I? Look, I have a problem. I'm in Norway, and—yes, _Norway_, will you just listen?"

Rose let her long purposeful stride increase the distance between herself and the last shred of evidence that the Doctor, the _proper_ Doctor, had ever been there. She gave a string of orders over the phone, easily slipping back into the life she'd always thought of as temporary, and she only started to look back once.

Jackie and a carbon copy of the man she'd grown to love and hate in equal measure over the years stood and watched as Rose stormed away, a whirlwind of purposefulness and avoidance. They saw the awkward stumble, the aborted half turn, and then she was on her way again, her voice carried away in the wind. The Doctor wilted, now Rose wasn't watching, and his casual, hands-in-pockets stance edged towards weary and defeated. Jackie reached out and gently touched his elbow. "She'll come around, love."

Jackie Tyler followed her daughter, and after a moment the Doctor did too, feeling uncomfortably like a stray dog, but what choice was there? That beautiful, maddening, brilliant woman...she was all he had.


	2. Chapter 2

**Welcome to Julsted**

**Summary: **Multi-chap post JE story. As if being ditched at Bad Wolf Bay wasn't bad enough... Rose, Jackie, and the Clone quickly discover that something is very very wrong in the idyllic seaside town of Julsted. Adventure, angst, and adorableness ensue. (Did I mention that it's set on Christmas Eve?)  
**Author's Note: **Sorry for the delay! I know, I'm the worst. Blame it on obsessive over-editing. And school. I really had trouble with this chapter, and I'm still not sure if I'm crazy about it, but I think I've done what I can. Please let me know what you think!

* * *

Half an hour from the bay, and the long-gathering storm clouds finally burst. The poorly paved road ran with mud and Rose's dark mood passed agitated, moving well on towards _high holy rage_. Torchwood reported back that they couldn't get an answer on a single line in Julsted, and perhaps the phones were out? "Well, start dialing cell phones, then," Rose growled, and shoved her old super-phone deep in her pocket to protect it from the driving rain. The sludgy evidence of recent snowfall lined the road and dropped from the trees, and it might have been lovely if it weren't so dismal.

With the sun dipping low behind him and Rose up ahead, this new Doctor felt himself unraveling—retreating back to that one, searing absolute. Always, Rose was gone. She didn't want _him_—he knew enough to know that—and he had a sneaking suspicion that without her he would cease to exist. He needed more than duplicate memories to convince himself he was real. He needed Rose.

Their uphill march was nearing the hour mark when they finally passed the large wooden sign, gorgeously hand painted: WELCOME TO JULSTED.

"As if once wasn't enough," Rose muttered, and the Doctor looked at her. Rose glanced back. "Oh, stop with the eyes, I can't stand it."

The Doctor blew out a long, shaky breath and carried on, repressing a strange urge to take the bait and start a fight. Instead he let himself drift, falling into the memory of that long deserted street; turning to find Rose with that big stupid gun and that big stupid grin. He remembered the Dalek and the pain but he mainly remembered her face above him, her cool smooth hand supporting his head, and words. _It missed you? I missed you?_

_Rose. _

Memories of someone else's life played out in his mind's eye, and he watched with a detached discomfort as Rose and Jackie got farther and farther ahead of him in the gathering dusk. When they crossed city limits they were drenched, cold, and caked with mud, and they all failed to notice a pair of eyes watching from the forest—a small figure keeping pace.

* * *

The Doctor, frozen hands shoved deep in his pockets, ignored the uncomfortable squelching of his shoes and turned onto an outlying residential street, determined to say something to Rose, _anything_, just to hear her voice, or force her to look at him again, but he was brought up short by the sight of it all, and for a moment the concern that he might wink out of existence was displaced by a more immediate problem.

There was absolutely something very wrong in Julsted.

Immediately on alert, he experienced a moment of sheer panic before locating Rose and Jackie about fifty yards away, partially concealed by a wrecked mail truck. It was stalled in the road, doors open, surrounded by hundreds of scattered envelopes. A gust of wind momentarily animated the cards and bills before dying back down, but there was a howling all around them as flurries rushed along the empty spaces between buildings. The Doctor hurried to join them, and as he walked up, Rose was climbing back down from the driver's seat.

"Key's still in the ignition," she said.

"And what does that tell us?" Jackie said, arms crossed tightly over her chest, less than thrilled with the turn of events.

Rose stared back down the road, toward the water. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and the rolling storm clouds were vividly red and orange. They were all washed in the rapidly fading light. "Nothing, I guess."

She tried to wipe away some of the water on her face with the cuff of her jacket, but there wasn't a dry spot on her, and she made a low, frustrated noise in the back of her throat. Somewhere in the distance, a bolt of lightning leapt from sky to ground.

"There's the 'inviting chimney smoke' we noticed from the road," the Doctor said, pointing, and then crouched to reach up under a precarious pile of flotsam and jetsam in someone's yard. Rose looked where he'd pointed to take in the smoldering shell that must have been, in the recent past, someone's small cottage home. She looked back at the Doctor, who emerged with a smudge of dirt on his cheek and studied some prize he'd found underneath.

"Yeah..." she said, mostly to herself, and slowly turned in place, surveying the area. Trash, twisted metal, and the scattered remains of disaster were everywhere. There was not a thing in place, and no one in sight, as if a very large toddler had sat at the center and turned all of town inside out. And there was a strange silence under the sounds of the storm—the silence of desertion. It was a ghost town.

"Rose," the Doctor said, "is there a war? In this universe?"

Rose shook her head.

The Doctor picked something up. Tossed it aside. Rose noted that, to her, it looked no different than the things he was saving.

"Did some magpie get mixed in there, or is it all Doctor and Donna?" she asked, and he sent her a withering glare from where he was loading what appeared to be a pile of junk into a mail bag from the nearby truck.

"What's happened here? Where is everyone?" Jackie said.

"I don't know, I don't know" the Doctor said, worrying his hair so it stood on end. His eyes darted from one building to the next as he occasionally bent to tuck a scrap of something into the bag, or touch the tip of his tongue to a puzzling object. Jackie was eying him a mixture of disbelief and fascination, but Rose was already halfway up the street, moving toward the center of town.

"Come on!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Let's see if we can find someone who can tell us what's going on."

The Doctor jogged to catch up and fell in step with Rose, who let him.

* * *

"Looks like the rain's letting up," the Doctor said, and Rose turned from where she was peering through someone's front window and watched him try to wring out his jacket. She dragged her eyes up from his wet, clinging red shirt, and when he sighed quietly at the state of his outfit she could see his breath.

"You're turning blue," she said.

He glanced down at himself absently. "You don't like the blue? No, you wouldn't, would you? Partial to the brown."

Rose nearly smiled. "No, your lips."

"My what?" he said, a little shrill, and then Rose was staring at his mouth without realizing, wondering with some surprise if she'd ever seen the Doctor blush before.

This was getting rapidly out of hand, so Rose employed a tactic she'd learned from the Doctor—babble and run away. "We should probably get you inside before you die of hypothermia. Where's mum run off to? Right, there she is."

The Doctor pulled his jacket on uncomfortably and mumbled, mostly to himself. "I can't get hypothermia."

"You can now," Rose called over her shoulder, picking her way down the littered driveway.

Jackie saw her coming and called, "Why do I keep stepping in bowls of porridge?"

"What?" Rose said, and circumnavigated an overturned car on her way over to her mother. The Doctor spun to look back at the house. Bowl of porridge on the front stoop, straw goat hanging on a nail on the front door, unlit string of lights on the eaves...oh.

"Bastard," he muttered, and ran after Rose.

* * *

The Doctor nearly bowled Rose over in his attempt to get to her before she figured it out on her own, but by the time he reached her she was already staring up at the centerpiece of town square. So much for softening the blow. He could tell from her posture that she was absorbing the impact, and he didn't say anything. He came to stand beside her, and tried not to look at Jackie, from whom he expected a fair amount of scolding.

"What the hell is that," Rose said flatly. The Doctor looked back up, took it in. Brightly festooned and towering above everything around it, was an enormous and utterly marvelous Christmas tree. Picking up on the rhetorical nature of Rose's question, the Doctor decided to keep his mouth shut.

Rose pushed her wet, tangled hair back from her face in a gesture of sheer frustration. "Is it Christmas?"

The Doctor squirmed, finding he was still _terrible_ at keeping his mouth shut. "Well...yes, sorry. Just realized. That's why we keep seeing the porridge; it's for the julebukk." The last he said rather dramatically, letting it hang. When no one asked what the julebukk was, he went on, somewhat deflated. "It's an old superstition. You have to...well, basically you bribe the julebukk—Christmas goat—to leave your house out of the mischief on Christmas Eve. The _last_ time I was in Norway at Christmas time-"

"Oh, spare us," Jackie said. "You're just like that other one, aren't you?"

The Doctor looked at her reproachfully. "_Yes,_" he said, speaking as though Jackie were an especially slow child.

Jackie pulled a face.

Rose didn't seem to have registered anything they'd said. "He left me, _again_, in Norway, in the middle of nowhere, on _Christmas_."

Jackie was already checking the date on her cell phone. "December twenty-fourth. Christmas Eve. Maybe he meant it to be nice?"

And at that, they both looked at the new Doctor, as if he was meant to explain. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, floundering. He found himself wanting to say, _I'm not him, how should I know?_ and then felt sick at the thought. Because he was. He was, in every way, that other man who left Rose without looking back, so what difference did it make that he was here now?

"Nevermind, it's not important," Rose said, turning away from him and looking up at the tree. There was a large chunk missing toward the top, as though something had taken a bite out if it. Many of the ornaments had been ripped from the branches and scattered haphazardly throughout the square. And still there was no one. That unsettling quiet. "Okay, let's get this place sorted. What are you thinking? Something alien, or..."

"Rose-" the Doctor said, feeling he'd missed his moment, but she ignored him, and it didn't matter because he couldn't think of anything to say.

"That would make sense. It's always Christmas, isn't it? They attack or invade, or..." Rose bent down to pluck an ornament from a pile of debris, turning it slowly in her hands. "Save the planet and have a nice Christmas dinner like a proper person..."

"Rose..." this from Jackie, a whisper, but no one paid her any attention.

"Does he mean to bookend us?" Rose said

"Doctor..." Jackie interjected, slightly more urgent now.

"Not now, Jackie," he said, never looking away from Rose. "I don't think he meant it to be cruel."

He stumbled over the words.

"Oh, what do you know?" Rose said, sounding slightly petulant and hating herself for it.

"I know plenty," he said softly. "I know you. And I know him."

Rose tried to answer, but she was horrified to find that she couldn't speak around the lump forming in her throat. She was trying to decide if it would be more embarrassing to cry in front of him or run away without a word when-

"Doctor!" Jackie shrieked, and this time something in her voice made him turn, Rose along with him, and that's when they saw it—slavering and heaving, the size of a small house, long, matted hair lifting and settling as it shook itself. It leaned towards them, straining in place, and then dragged first one twisted horn, and then the other, down the siding of the city hall building with an awful, grating shriek. It stared at them with rolling, bulging eyes, and snorted a sharp, visible breath of air. It stepped forward slightly with one large hoof. Bleated.

"What is _that_?" the Doctor blurted, that hint of Donna creeping into his voice. He cleared his throat.

"Well, if _you _don't know-" Rose hissed.

"Will you two _stop bickering_? How did you ever survive?" Jackie said, overloud, stumbling back in a panic. They were all tripping over one another in an attempt to widen the gap between themselves and the goat-like monster, which took another small step and pawed the sidewalk, tearing up large swaths of cement. It could close the distance between them in a few bounds, but it seemed to be taking its time, feeling them out.

"What's the plan?" Rose said, backing away slowly, slowly. Shaking with either the cold or fear.

"Run," the Doctor whispered, his voice slightly hoarse, and Rose looked at him, dazed, hearing the word echo forward through time, across space. This was how it always started—her love affair with the Doctor. It always started when he told her to...

"Rose, Jackie, _run!_"

And they did.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Welcome to Julsted (3/6: Follow Me)

Pairings/Characters: Rose/TenII

* * *

Running for their lives again, and wasn't that typical? The goat was new, but this...this was all so familiar. Watching him up ahead, dragging her mother along, his feet barely touching the ground, Rose felt an insane urge to laugh. That tall, unfathomable man—he was made for running, and she was made for chasing after.

Rose caught the slight turn of his head as he checked that she was still behind him, and the unmistakable gleam of excitement in his thousand-year-old eyes, and the choked giggle did escape her then, in between gasps for air.

She was startled at the noise. It sounded like a sob.

"This is all your fault!" Jackie was shouting at the Doctor, continuing the litany that began with the first sighting of the monster. "Trouble! Wherever you go!"

"Oi!" he shot back aiming for annoyed but landing closer to amused, "This appears to have been going on long before I was...ah... _born,_ so I don't see how-"

"Left!" Rose bellowed suddenly, and the Doctor, who was already in the process of veering right, nearly knocked Jackie off her feet as he hooked round.

"Careful, Jackie!" he said, almost certainly just to bait her, and went on, "Anyway, this has nothing to do with-"

"Shut up!" Rose yelled. "We're going to be eaten!"

Oh, but he was trying so hard not to look thrilled at the prospect. How _fun._

Just ahead, on the right, was a sporting goods store, the front of which gleamed with floor-to-ceiling windows. The window display was decked out for Christmas, and the the red awnings were bowing under the weight of the snow.

"There!" Rose shouted, and then slower, butchering the Norwegian, "...Idrett Gods...Lager."

The Doctor actually _laughed at her_, and she sent him an exasperated look as they all skidded to a halt in the mud, between a sign that was presumably advertising specials, and a small potted Christmas tree. Rose rattled the door handle. Locked.

"Here," the Doctor said, reaching inside his breast pocket, and then froze.

"What?" Rose said, impatient.

"Ahhh, sonic..." the Doctor said, mostly to himself. Suddenly, he was looking rather lost. "He has my..."

From the sound of things, the monster was gaining on them, crashing down a too-narrow street. There was the not-too-distant sound of shattering glass. Rose looked away toward the noise, back at the Doctor.

"Boost me," she said.

"What?" he said, dazed, looking at his hands.

Rose gestured at the small, propped-open window above the door. "Boost me up there or we're going to die."

He looked. "You're not going to fit through-"

But the way she scowled at him then was enough to stop even him talking, and he laced his fingers together, bending so that she could step into his hands. She placed a muddy shoe in the makeshift stirrup and grabbed the edge of the window with one white-knuckled hand, climbing up the Doctor like a ladder. She jabbed a knee into his shoulder, and he groaned.

"Hurry up," Jackie hissed, and Rose hoisted herself into the window, hung awkwardly for a moment, half in and half out, and then wriggled through, falling not quite gracefully to the linoleum floor inside. Jackie and the Doctor winced sympathetically, but there really wasn't time for that, as the monster rounded onto their street and charged.

Jackie immediately began pounding on the door, and Rose pushed herself upright, throwing the bolt. Jackie wasted no time in barreling past her, but the Doctor just stood quietly in the street, staring at the oncoming beast.

"Oh, you beauty," he whispered.

"Come on!" Rose yelled, and yanked him through the door by his sleeve. She slammed the door shut, and they could see the subtle bowing of the glass as the monster bounded toward them—the surface oscillated with each footfall, in, out, in...

Jackie ducked behind a tower of gardening supplies—packets of seeds, trowels, potting soil—and squeezed her eyes shut against the thundering sound of the monster's approach.

"Stay there," Rose said to Jackie.

"Where else am I going to go?" Jackie snapped, and Rose rolled her eyes reflexively as she shoved the Doctor under the checkout counter before cramming herself in after him.

"No need to manhandle-" the Doctor said, but the monster's bulk was suddenly filling the storefront, and Rose reached out and covered his mouth with her fingertips. Her breath hitched a bit at the contact, but she looked away from his gently startled look and locked eyes with her mother across the room, placing a finger to her lips. Be quiet.

Terrified, crouching in the window behind what suddenly seemed like laughably insufficient cover, Jackie nodded. Outside, the monster snuffled, pacing. It raked a horn down the glass and they all winced at the high-pitched sound. Rose looked back at the Doctor, suddenly very aware that her fingers were still pressed against his lips, and pulled her hand back like it burned. He seemed like he was about to say something, and she leaned forward, but the monster grew impatient then, throwing its full weight against the glass with a sharp sound, like a thunderclap, like sheets of metal in the wind, and they all jumped. The glass splintered but remained intact, a web of cracks blossomed from the point of impact.

The monster pressed its face to the glass and breathed big mushrooming patches of steam on the window, and Rose was suddenly realizing she had a matter of seconds to figure out what to do once it was inside, but then it turned, staring off down the street as though something had caught its attention. And before anyone realized what was happening, it was gone.

There was a silence then, and they imagined the sounds of it returning, but it never did, and the Doctor looked out from under the desk. Rose and Jackie waited tensely and he stood. He went to the door.

"It's gone," he said.

It was full dark outside, and Rose wasn't sure, as she came to stand behind him, if he was peering out into the streets, searching, or just staring at his own reflection.  


* * *

  
Rose left Jackie filling a basket in the camping section and quietly went to find the Doctor. She found him leaning on the front counter and just stopped, watching him. He looked older, sadder, she realized. But then, so did she.

He was slowly turning a spinner of reading glasses, one pair already on. He took them off and tried on another pair. Square rimmed with a subtle tortoise shell pattern. He studied himself in the small mirror at the top of the display, tight lipped.

"Go with those, definitely," Rose said, and he jumped. He whipped the glasses off, but after a moment's hesitation, tucked them away in his jacket.

Rose saw that he'd removed the back panel of the cash register and pulled out various bits and bobs, dumping them in one of his many bags of liberated consumer electronics. The longer they stayed the larger the pile seemed to be getting. Rose didn't comment.

"Jackie find what she was looking for?" he said.

"She's digging through a pile of freeze-dried meals with names like "storfekjøtt stroganof" as we speak..."

The corners of his mouth quirked upwards. "Sounds like you're in for a treat, as you grew up on her cooking."

Rose ducked her head to hide a smile. "Quite right."

An awkward silence, and suddenly Rose was fishing through her pockets. "Here," she said, tossing something to the Doctor, who caught it reflexively. A bright, blue-handled Phillips head screwdriver. He looked up blankly.

"Until you can build a new one," Rose said, suddenly self-conscious. "You'll have to make due. Like the rest of us humans."

The Doctor swallowed hard, his expression unreadable, and slipped the screwdriver into his breast pocket. "Thanks."

Rose blustered on. "Come on, let's go collect mum before she wanders off."

She turned without waiting for an answer, and he followed, reaching up to touch the screwdriver through his jacket, hand over his single heart.  


* * *

  
They came upon Jackie, kneeling among a forest of winter coats, loading a portable propane stove and kettle into a large canvas backpack. She sat back to survey an impossible pile of camp meals.

"Blimey," Rose said, "Not optimistic about us getting rescued, then, are you?

Jackie gave her that particular look that mothers reserve for daughters and began tossing all of the packets of food into her bag. The Doctor, staying out of this one, drifted off a ways and began rifling through the jackets. He pulled out something long and brown, held it up, and after a moment of consideration, put it back.

Jackie watched Rose watching him. Interrupted. "Rose, shift that tent. Just there. See if you can lift it."

Following Jackie's gesture, Rose laid eyes on an enormous collapsed tent.

"We're not sleeping in a tent, mum," she said, exasperated. "There's a bloody inn three streets over."

The Doctor glanced at her, amused.

"All right!" Jackie said, cinching the bag shut with unnecessary force. "There's no need to be like that! I'm just trying to help."

Jackie stood, brushing herself off. Gentler, now. "Was it always like this? All those years with him?"

The Doctor had shrugged into a black wool jacket, and as he turned the collar up experimentally, he looked at Rose. She glanced back briefly, and there was a warmth in her eyes that he recognized from that other time, that other life.

"Yeah, pretty much," she said.

Rose reached down to grab the backpack and heft it onto one shoulder.

"And you still went back," Jackie said. "You left your family-"

"Yes," Rose said, ending the conversation. The Doctor absently did up his buttons, thinking about Jackie waiting for Rose while they went running off across the universe. He owed her. A lifetime's worth of fear and goodbyes...and Rose was always too happy to go skipping off after him.

"Come on, let's-" Rose said, but the resounding sound of breaking glass at the front of the store cut her short, and for a moment they all froze. The Doctor and Rose whirled to look at each other, and she caught his intention in his wide, slightly mad eyes...

"No-"

Too late. He was already running toward the storefront.

"Ohhh, give me a break," Rose growled, ripping the backpack off and shoving it into Jackie's arms. "Take this, out the back. Run straight to the inn and we'll meet you there."

Jackie shook her head, trying to hand the bag back. "I'm not leaving you."

"Oh God, please don't argue with me," Rose said, looking toward where he'd disappeared. "Out the back mum, please!"

Jackie gave her daughter one last, agonized look and ran out the back exit, tripping the alarm, and Rose charged after the Doctor, terrified, her heart in her throat. She couldn't lose him, not now, not like this, not again.


End file.
